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A New Model to Represent SOA Formation from Volatile Chemical Products
Citation:
Pennington, E., K. Seltzer, B. Murphy, J. Seinfeld, AND H. Pye. A New Model to Represent SOA Formation from Volatile Chemical Products. CMAS Conference, Chapel Hill, NORTH CAROLINA, October 26 - 30, 2020.
Impact/Purpose:
Volatile chemical products (VCP) emit organic gases into the atmosphere which can cause PM2.5 formation via secondary organic aerosols (SOA). Here, SOA chemistry for VCP emissions is added to the CMAQ model to estimate the role of VCPs in SOA formation for southern California.
Description:
Volatile chemical products (VCPs) have important implications for air quality but are not well characterized. Field studies have demonstrated the prevalence of gas-phase VCPs in urban environments, but few chamber studies have been performed to quantify their ability to form secondary organic aerosol (SOA). Quantitative structure-activity-relationships (SAR) models describe the properties and activities of compounds based on their chemical structure and are useful in the absence of empirical data. We use existing SAR models to estimate reactivity against OH and other oxidants, volatility, partitioning and heterogeneous uptake coefficients, and other parameters relevant to SOA formation. Oxidation products and SOA yields are estimated using multigenerational oxidation schemes and compared to published yields. We compile the results of these simulations to present a broad level understanding of the ability of VCPs to form SOA. A binned volatility model predicts SOA formation from VCPs that are currently unspeciated in air quality models. This model improves our understanding of the environmental fate of VCPs, specifically the impact on SOA mass and speciation. This model can be implemented in CMAQ to better represent anthropogenic SOA formation.
